John Clare

“ Wordsworth has had little share of popularity, though he bids fair to be as great in one species of poetry as Byron was in another, but to acknowledge such an opinion in the world's ear would only pucker the lips of fashion into a sneer against it. Yet his lack of living praise is no proof of his lack of genius. The trumpeting clamour of public praise is not to be relied on as the creditor of the future. The quiet progress of a name gaining ground by gentle degrees in the world's esteem is the best living shadow of fame to follow. ”

“ Love is not here. Hope is, and at His voice—
The rolling thunder and the roaring sea—
My pulses leap, and with the hills rejoice;
Then strife and turmoil are at end for me.
No matter where life's ocean leads me on,
For Nature is my mother, and I rest,
When tempests trouble and the sun is gone,
Like to a weary child upon her breast.
THE INVITATION Come hither, my dear one, my choice one, and rare one,
And let us be walking the meadows so fair,
Where on pilewort and daisies the eye fondly gazes,
And the wind plays so sweet in thy bonny brown hair. ”

“ There meet me at eve, love, we'll on grassy banks lean love,
And crop a white branch from the scented may tree,
Where the silver brook wimples and the rosy cheek dimples,
Sweet will the time of that courting hour be.
We'll notice wild flowers, love, that grow by thorn bowers, love,
Though sinful to crop them now beaded with dew;
The violet is thine, love, the primrose is mine, love,
To Spring and each other so blooming and true.
With dewdrops all beaded, the feather grass seeded,
The cloud mountains turn to dark woods in the sky;
The daisy bud closes, while sleep the hedge roses ”

“ She seemed the muse of that sweet spot,
The lady of the plain,
And all was dull where she was not,
Till we met there again.
EVENING 'T is evening: the black snail has got on his track,
And gone to its nest is the wren,
And the packman snail, too, with his home on his back,
Clings to the bowed bents like a wen.
The shepherd has made a rude mark with his foot
Where his shadow reached when he first came,
And it just touched the tree where his secret love cut
Two letters that stand for love's name. ”

“ And meet joy in these dew-falling hours.
For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love,
Where nothing can hear or intrude;
It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove,
In beautiful green solitude.
A VALENTINE Here's a valentine nosegay for Mary,
Some of Spring's earliest flowers;
The ivy is green by the dairy,
And so are these laurels of ours.
Though the snow fell so deep and the winter was dreary,
The laurels are green and the sparrows are cheery.
The snowdrops in bunches grow under the rose,
And aconites under the lilac, like fairies ”

“ Where is the poet who shares half the popularity of Warren, Turner, or Day and Martin, whose ebony fames are spread through every dirty little village in England? These instances of the trifling and ridiculous made as much noise and stir in their day as the best, and noise and bustle are the essence and soul of popularity.
The nearest akin to popularity is common fame. I mean names that are familiar among the common people. It is not a very envious species, for they seldom know how to value or appreciate what they are acquainted with. ”

“ I hope in God, for your sake, and for the sake of your dear children, that all danger is over, and that she is now in a fair way to be speedily restored to you. Pardon me, my clear Clare, when I entreat you to do all in your power to comfort and compose her mind under her present delicate situation. Recollect if she is now a faded flower she has become so under your influence, and well may you be loth to lose the object who has shed her brightest hues on you, and who in giving birth to your sweet offspring may chance to fade almost to nothingness herself. ”

“ Are graced by couples linking arm in arm,
Sweet smiles enjoying or some book a-reading,
Where Love and Beauty are the constant charm;
For while the bonny May is dancing by,
Beauty delights the ear, and Beauty fills the eye.
Birds sing and build, and Nature scorns alone
On May's young festival to be a widow;
The children, too, have pleasures all their own,
In gathering lady-smocks along the meadow.
The little brook sings loud among the pebbles,
So very loud, that water-flowers, which lie
Where many a silver curdle boils and dribbles,
Dance too with joy as it goes singing by. ”

“ Popularity is a busy talker: she catches hold of topics and offers them to fame without giving herself time to reflect whether they are true or false, and fashion is her favourite disciple who sanctions and believes them as eagerly, and with the same faith, as a young lady in the last century read a new novel and a tavern-haunter in this reads the news. It is natural, with such foundations, to ask whether popularity is fame, for it often happens that very slender names come to be popular from many causes with which merit or genius has no sort of connection or kindred. ”

“ And everlasting love thee.
WHAT IS LIFE? And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length?—A minute's pause, a moment's thought;
And happiness?—a bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.
What are vain hopes?—The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each flow'ret of its gem,—and dies;
A cobweb hiding disappointment's thorn,
Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise.
And what is Death? Is still the cause unfound? ”

“ When a man is warm and comfortable on a cold day he cannot wish for an excess that would burn him. Therefore we need neither hope for more Shakespeares nor regret that there is but one. When the Muses created him a poet they created him the sun of the firmament of genius, and time has proved, and will prove, that they glory in their creation, deeming it sufficient, without striving to find or create another, for nature knows the impossibility. ”

“ My dear Clare,—
You see in what a brotherly way I commence my letter: not with the frigid 'Sir' as if I were addressing one of a totally unkindred clay, one of the drossy children of earth, with whom I have no relationship and feel I could never have any familiarity. Have you ever felt that the presence of a man without feeling made you a fool? I am always dumb, or pusillanimous or (if I speak) ridiculous, in the company of such a person. I love a reasoner, and do not by any means wish to be flashing lightning, cloud-riding, or playing with stars. ”

“ Forgive me for talking thus to you, my dear Clare. I have no other motive than your domestic happiness, which I anxiously pray may be undisturbed by any event. I lament to learn by your letter that to stifle recollections of the past, &c., you should have fled to such resources on your journey home. Now you become the sufferer by such means. Why not exert your philosophy, instead of seeking that which serves to destroy your health and peace? You know, my dear Clare, that you are injuring yourself in the deepest sense by such habits. ”

“ Dear Clare,—
Have you visited the haunts of poor Cowper which you were invited to see? And if so, what accordance did you find between the places and his descriptions of them? What a glory it is for poetry that it can make any piece of trumpery an object of curiosity and interest! I had the pleasure of meeting last week with Mr. Wordsworth. He is no piece of trumpery, but has all the appearance of being that noblest work, an honest man. I think I scarcely ever met with any one eminent for genius who had not also something very amiable and engaging in his manners and character. ”

“ And her tale of love the sweetest that my ear has ever heard.
O the flower of all the forest was Mary Littlechild;
There's few could be so dear to me and none could be so fair.
While many love the garden flowers I still esteem the wild,
And Mary of the forest is the fairest blossom there.
She's fairer than the may flowers that bloom among the thorn,
She's dearer to my eye than the rose upon the brere ”

“ In this light, while the miseries of the poet are none the less real and claim none the less of our sympathy, the moral problem of Clare's woes belongs rather to humanity at large than to poets in particular. We are at liberty to hope, then, that the world is all the richer, and that Clare's lot was none the harder, by reason of that dispensation of Providence which has given to English literature such a volume as "The Rural Muse." How many are there who not only fail, as Clare failed, to rise above their circumstances, but who, in addition, leave nothing behind them to enrich posterity! ”

“ Do you meditate too much or sit too immovably? Poetry, I mean the composition of it, does not always sweeten the mind as much as the reading of it. There is always an anxiety, a fervour, an impatience, a vaingloriousness attending it which untranquillizes even in the sweetest-seeming moods of the poet. Like the bee, he is restless and uneasy even in collecting his sweets. Farewell, my dear Clare, and when you have leisure and inclination, write to me again.
Sincerely yours,
GEORGE DARLEY." "London, 5 Upper Eaton Street, Grosvenor Place,
March 14th, 1829. ”

“ O love is here, and love is there:
O love is like no other thing:
Its frowns can make a king a slave,
Its smiles can make a slave a king.
BETRAYED Dream not of love, to think it like
What waking love may prove to be,
For I dreamed so and broke my heart,
When my false lover slighted me.
Love, like to flowers, is sweet when green;
The rose in bud aye best appears;
And she that loves a handsome man
Should have more wit than she has years.
I put my finger in a bush,
Thinking the sweeter rose to find;
I pricked my finger to the bone,
And left the sweetest rose behind. ”

“ Are met with the living no more.
I have lived to see friends that I loved pass away
With the pleasures their company gave:
I have lived to see love, with my Susan, decay,
And the grass growing green on her grave."
TO A ROSEBUD IN HUMBLE LIFE Sweet, uncultivated blossom,
Reared in Spring's refreshing dews,
Dear to every gazer's bosom,
Fair to every eye that views;—
Opening bud, whose youth can charm us,
Thine be many a happy hour:
Spreading rose, whose beauties warm us—
Flourish long, my lovely flower. ”

“ Where Susan once saw a bird's nest on the top,
And I reached her the eggs with my hand:
And so long since the day I remember so well,
It has stretched to a sizable tree,
And the birds yearly come in its branches to dwell,
As far from a giant as me.
On a favourite spot, by the side of a brook,
When Susan was just in her pride,
A ripe bunch of nuts from her apron she took,
To plant as she sat by my side.
They have grown up with years, and on many a bough
Cluster nuts like their parents agen,
Where shepherds no doubt have oft sought them ere now,
To please other Susans since then. ”

“ And the daisies that bed
In the sheltered homestead—
Old friends with old faces, I see them again.
And thou, feathered poet,
I see thee, and know it—
Thou'rt one of the minstrels that cheered me last Spring:
With Nature thou'rt blest,
And green grass round thy nest
Will keep thee still happy to mount up and sing.
POETS LOVE NATURE—A FRAGMENT Poets love Nature, and themselves are love.
Though scorn of fools, and mock of idle pride.
The vile in nature worthless deeds approve,
They court the vile and spurn all good beside.
Poets love Nature ”

“ Whether Byron hath won true fame or not I cannot say; my mind is too little to grasp that judgment. To say that he was the first of his age in his way is saying nothing, but we have sufficient illustration for the argument in saying that popularity is not the forerunner of fame's eternity. Among all the bustle of popularity there must be only a portion of it accepted as fame. Time will sift it of its drossy puffs and praises. He has been with others extolled as equal to Shakespeare, and I dare say the popular voice of "readers" thought him superior. ”

“ Where thou could'st sing of other spheres,
And feel the fame of future years.
Though bitter sneers and stinging scorns
Did throng the muse's dangerous way,
Thy powers were past such little thorns,
They gave thee no dismay;
The scoffer's insult pass'd thee by.
Thou smild'st and mad'st him no reply.
Envy will gnaw its heart away
To see thy genius gather root;
And as its flowers their sweets display
Scorn's malice shall be mute;
Hornets that summer warmed to fly,
Shall at the death of summer die.
Though friendly praise hath but its hour,
And little praise with thee hath been ”

“ Till he e'en got the ague, still nought could prevail,
So ever since then he's been wagging his tail.
In the whitethorn the Linnet bides lonely to sing
How his lady-love shunned his embraces in Spring,
Though he found out a bush that the sun had half drest
With leaves quite sufficient to shelter their nest;
And yet she forsook him, no more to be seen,
So that is the reason he dresses in green.
Then aloud in his grief sings the gay speckled Thrush,
That changes his music on every bush—
"My love she has left me to sorrow and mourn,
Yet I hope in my heart she'll repent and return;" ”

“ But too well does poor Clare's history illustrate that interpretation of the myth which pictures Great Pan secretly busy among the reeds and fashioning, with sinister thought, the fatal pipe which shall "make a poet out of a man." And yet it may be doubted whether, on the whole, Clare's lot in life, and that of the wife and family who were dependent upon him, was aggravated by the poetic genius which we are thus trying to make the scapegoat for his misfortunes. ”

“ Emmerson at this time, "your painful letter of to-day is no sooner read by me than I take up my pen, and an extra-sized sheet of paper, to pour out the regrets of my heart for your illness. God knows I am little able to give thee 'comfort,' for indeed, my Clare, thy friend is a beggar in philosophy, so heavily have the ills of humanity pressed upon her of late; but such 'comfort' as confiding and sympathizing souls can offer do I give in full to thee. ”